{"id":15608,"date":"2017-01-08T10:29:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T17:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15608"},"modified":"2017-01-08T10:29:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T17:29:14","slug":"prairie-lights-looking-back-on-the-best-of-last-best-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/01\/prairie-lights-looking-back-on-the-best-of-last-best-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: Looking back on the best of Last Best News"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bison\"<\/a>

John Warner<\/p>

Our best-read story of the year was the “Running of the Bison” piece on April 1. John Warner’s brilliantly photoshopped artwork deserves much of the credit.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week in this space, I delivered a spoof year-end review of Montana and Billings-area news. I sincerely hope you all understood that was a spoof.<\/p>\n

If not, write to me and I’ll put you on our Satire and Spoof Alert Email List, which will go out in advance of any stories or columns of a facetious nature.<\/p>\n

This week, I wanted to draw your attention not necessarily to the best or biggest stories we published in 2016, but a selection of stories I didn’t want anyone\u00a0to miss. I know how hard it is to follow any website on a regular basis, and I know Last Best News is always picking up new readers who might not have any idea how much good stuff there is in the archives (in my somewhat prejudiced opinion).<\/p>\n

So, let’s start with a story with a story of mine from Jan. 5, 2016, my exploration of The Pekin Noodle Parlor<\/a>\u00a0in Butte. I’d been going there for decades, basking in the eminently strange atmosphere, the unique food and the fascinating history, and finally got around to writing about it. This piece originally appeared in the Montana Quarterly.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 22, contributor Anna Paige reported on a win for the home team, when the Northern Hotel’s then-chef beat television celebrity chef Bobby Flay<\/a>. A few days later, to prove that Last Best News is a supporter of carbon, we published my\u00a0homage to King Coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Toward the the end of the month came some big news, from our perspective at least: that David Crisp was\u00a0shutting down the Billings Outpost<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0partnering with Last Best News.<\/p>\n

Early in February, we broke the\u00a0story of the Red Lodge Police Department’s ill-considered drug bust<\/a> in nearby Bearcreek, an event that would have repercussions for many months afterward.<\/p>\n

Not long after that, Crisp warned that journalists<\/a> were not giving the presidential primary the kind of coverage the voters deserved. If only more journalists had listened.<\/p>\n

In mid-February, Roger Kettle, our favorite Scot, with an illustration from the lavishly talented Steve Bright, wrote of the futility of trying to fit in with the locals <\/a>on his visits to Montana.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>And on Feb. 19, architect\u00a0Ed Gulick did an admirable job of explaining why buying local is so important<\/a>. When Ed pitched the story, I was actually afraid that it might be too dry and technical for general readers. Not to worry; this accessible piece drew a lot of readers and a great response.<\/p>\n

At the end of the month, I wrote about\u00a0the passing of Dwight Raup<\/a>, a street person who touched so many lives in downtown Billings.<\/p>\n

Early in March,\u00a0Crisp wrote a heartfelt review<\/a> of Garrison Keillor’s appearance\u2014part of his goodbye tour\u2014at the Alberta Bair Theater. Soon thereafter,\u00a0Jim Elliott, a former state legislator and a regular contributor of guest editorials to Last Best News, wrote about the vanishing virtue of compromise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A story that drew huge numbers of readers\u2014and perhaps the longest string of Facebook comments in the history of Last Best News\u2014chronicled\u00a0one woman’s unpleasant experience<\/a> trying to get help for her mental illness.<\/p>\n

Also in March, Paul Driscoll wrote\u00a0a wonderful tribute<\/a> to the Land Rover Defender. This was a subject about which I was entirely ignorant, which only made me enjoy this story more.<\/p>\n

On April 1, or April Fool’s Day as it is sometimes known, I collaborated with photographer John Warner on a story about a\u00a0Running of the Bison<\/a>\u00a0event in Laurel. It was the best-read story of the year. (See above for getting on our spoof-alert list.)<\/p>\n

I wrote in May about a church in Ballantine that had become known as\u00a0the church that feeds the children<\/a>. The people who made this happen have earned their wings.<\/p>\n

God forbid I should ever complain, but I am going to include\u00a0a story I wrote later in May, about\u00a0the inner workings of the Rescue Mission Bargain Center<\/a>, simply because, dang it, I really liked this story … which\u00a0attracted few readers. I’ll recommend it again here and never mention it again.<\/p>\n

At the end of the month, Crisp reported on Donald Trump’s only campaign stop in Billings.<\/a>\u00a0We both believed he didn’t have a chance in hell.<\/p>\n

Early in June, we published the first of Marian Lyman Kirst’s occasional “BugBytes” series<\/a>. She is a naturalist, bug lover and photographer with a keen sense of humor and a knack for explaining arcane bits of science clearly and well. And she’ll be back.<\/p>\n

In July,\u00a0Russell Rowland reflected on the Native American Race Relations and Healing Lecture Series<\/a>, which he helped found with Adrian Jawort. In the same month, I finally got around to writing about another establishment I’d long been fascinated with: the\u00a0Rainbow Bar<\/a>\u00a0on Montana Avenue, where the drinks are cheap, the clientele is always interesting and the history runs very deep.<\/p>\n

Not long after that, Billings novelist and Last Best News contributor Craig Lancaster wrote a great piece<\/a>\u00a0about how he and other artists, spurred on by a variety of impulses, were learning how to find their own way, independently.<\/p>\n

To end the month, I felt privileged to tell the\u00a0story of Grace<\/a>, the amazing horse who survived a winter ordeal in the wilderness. It was one of the best-read stories of the year.<\/p>\n

In August, I reviewed\u00a0Aaron Parrett\u2019s book<\/a>, \u201cMontana Americana Music: Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country.” I’m including it here because it was my favorite book of the year, and I want as many people as possible to know about it. And buy it, of course.<\/p>\n

At the end of the month, in a column on Colin Kaepernick<\/a>, Crisp showed why I consider his writing on free speech, First Amendment issues and politics generally to be as good as anything you’ll find anywhere else.<\/p>\n

I’d\u00a0written a few times before about Ben Steele, one of the best human beings I ever met. I wrote this<\/a> when he died in September. He really was a giant.<\/p>\n

Combing voluminous transcriptions of Donald Trump’s public oratory, Crisp crafted a number\u00a0of examples of what he called “Trumpoetry<\/a>,” an entirely new form of literature. Also in early October,\u00a0I looked at another aspect of the fake news phenomenon<\/a>\u2014the creation of site-specific click bait masquerading as legitimate news.<\/p>\n

Later that month, Phoebe Tollefson wrote a three-part series focusing on long-time residents of the West End, the Heights and the South Side who talked about the many changes they’d seen in the past few decades of sometimes rapid growth. The first installment<\/a> of the series looked at the South Side. It was an idea I wish I’d thought of, but I couldn’t have been happier with Phoebe’s stories.<\/p>\n

In the first of several quiet examinations of little islands of natural beauty and peacefulness on the outskirts of Montana’s largest city, Cal Cumin took us, in late October, to a remnant<\/a> of rimrock and pines at the end of October.<\/p>\n

In November,\u00a0Adrian Jawort gave us all a new way of looking at the Standing Rock protest<\/a> over the Dakota Access pipeline.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the November election, all the bad feelings, the divisiveness, the tinderbox readiness of so many people to get into a fight, seem to come to a head in the case of the Billings coffee shop owner<\/a> who took to Facebook and to vent his ugly prejudices.<\/p>\n

As something of an antidote to politics, contributor Tom Keith wrote a beautiful, evocative piece<\/a> about a lingering mystery he stumbled upon in the Missouri Breaks.<\/p>\n

In another piece on Standing Rock, published on Dec. 1,\u00a0Phillip Griffin delivered a respectful, insightful look<\/a> at what seemed to many a confusing situation.<\/p>\n

And on Christmas, we ran the story of Kiki and her new dog, Zarah<\/a>. It was a good way to end a strange year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week in this space, I delivered a spoof year-end review of Montana and Billings-area news. I sincerely hope you all understood that was a spoof. If not, write to me and I’ll put you on our Satire and Spoof Alert Email List, which will go out in advance of any stories or columns of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[125,136],"class_list":["post-15608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-john-warner","tag-last-best-news","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}